The End
I am angry and annoyed at someone. Or something.
Ok, let's call it what it is.
Impotent rage. Though I am not exactly raging at the moment. Too jet-lagged.
I was listening to Forum on the way home. It was about plagiarism in college. Seems honor codes don't work, not without enforcement. Everyone was moaning about it. Where are the values? But to me you can take a ruler and draw a straight line from the red dot on the blacktop to the period at the end of the plagiarized sentence in a college paper. It's like the Soviet Union when I visited in 1990. No one thought of themselves as behaving immorally when they tricked the system, to the contrary. It is a moral victory to outwit a morally bankrupt system. School is a prison, with capricious rules and demands. Any signing of an honor code within that system has all the moral weight of a confession signed under torture. When kids "get out" and move on to college is it any surprise that they can't shake the effects of 12 years of institutionalization?
Clem is a free spirit, but the effects of institutionalization on Evelyn could be alarming. What happens when they internalize those byzantine rules? In one of the first days at her old school Evelyn reported: "I like one of the girls at my table when we are outside, but inside," voice lowered and with disdain, "inside she has poor feet and chair habits." The kid sticks her feet in the aisle and doesn't sit with her chair pushed in. Hard to like a kid like that.
This experiment may well be over. Evelyn is too bored and Clem is too unhappy. I have the option of asking for a Student Study Team meeting and having Evelyn evaluated to skip a grade. There is no room in the 4th grade in her current school, so she may end up back in Middling Elementary. Also, it will take at least a month to do. At that point she'll have only 1.5 months left till our agreed-upon endpoint. Neither of them are lovin' it so much they'll never want to leave, as some people suggested might happen. Is it worth the trouble and upheaval for her? I don't think so. So there we go, I have barely written a word on my novel, and it is over. I am trying to decide if I can leave them in school one more week to give myself time to collect myself after my Europe trip and prepare, or if I should just pull the plug today and withdraw them.
Ok, let's call it what it is.
Impotent rage. Though I am not exactly raging at the moment. Too jet-lagged.
I was listening to Forum on the way home. It was about plagiarism in college. Seems honor codes don't work, not without enforcement. Everyone was moaning about it. Where are the values? But to me you can take a ruler and draw a straight line from the red dot on the blacktop to the period at the end of the plagiarized sentence in a college paper. It's like the Soviet Union when I visited in 1990. No one thought of themselves as behaving immorally when they tricked the system, to the contrary. It is a moral victory to outwit a morally bankrupt system. School is a prison, with capricious rules and demands. Any signing of an honor code within that system has all the moral weight of a confession signed under torture. When kids "get out" and move on to college is it any surprise that they can't shake the effects of 12 years of institutionalization?
Clem is a free spirit, but the effects of institutionalization on Evelyn could be alarming. What happens when they internalize those byzantine rules? In one of the first days at her old school Evelyn reported: "I like one of the girls at my table when we are outside, but inside," voice lowered and with disdain, "inside she has poor feet and chair habits." The kid sticks her feet in the aisle and doesn't sit with her chair pushed in. Hard to like a kid like that.
This experiment may well be over. Evelyn is too bored and Clem is too unhappy. I have the option of asking for a Student Study Team meeting and having Evelyn evaluated to skip a grade. There is no room in the 4th grade in her current school, so she may end up back in Middling Elementary. Also, it will take at least a month to do. At that point she'll have only 1.5 months left till our agreed-upon endpoint. Neither of them are lovin' it so much they'll never want to leave, as some people suggested might happen. Is it worth the trouble and upheaval for her? I don't think so. So there we go, I have barely written a word on my novel, and it is over. I am trying to decide if I can leave them in school one more week to give myself time to collect myself after my Europe trip and prepare, or if I should just pull the plug today and withdraw them.
posted by Susan at 5:12 AM
1 Comments:
Reminds me of the Harry Chapin song "Flowers are Red":
The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man
I'm paintin' flowers he said
She said... It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one
And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
Well the teacher said.. You're sassy
There's ways that things should be
And you'll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me.....
And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
The teacher put him in a corner
She said.. It's for your own good..
And you won't come out 'til you get it right
And all responding like you should
Well finally he got lonely
Frightened thoughts filled his head
And he went up to the teacher
And this is what he said.. and he said
Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
Time went by like it always does
And they moved to another town
And the little boy went to another school
And this is what he found
The teacher there was smilin'
She said...Painting should be fun
And there are so many colors in a flower
So let's use every one
But that little boy painted flowers
In neat rows of green and red
And when the teacher asked him why
This is what he said.. and he said
Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen.
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